man, therefore, be naturally endowed with a desire of the welfare and preservation of society, yet the author of nature has not intrusted it to his reason to find out that a certain application of punishments is the proper means of attaining this end; but has endowed him with an immediate and instinctive approbation of that very application which is most proper to attain it. The oeconomy of nature is in this respect exactly of a piece with what it is upon many other occasions. With re|gard to all those ends which, upon account of their pe|culiar importance, may be regarded, if such an expres|sion is allowable, as the favourite ends of nature, she has constantly in this manner not only endowed man|kind with an appetite for the end which she proposes, but likewise with an appetite for the means by which alone this end can be brought about, for their own sakes, and independent of their tendency to produce it. Thus self-preservation, and the propagation of the spe|cies, are the great ends which nature seems to have pro|posed in the formation of all animals. Mankind are endowed with a desire of those ends, and an aversion to the contrary; with a love of life, and a dread of disso|lution; with a desire of the continuance and perpetuity of the species, and with an aversion to the thoughts of its intire extinction. But tho' we are in this manner endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has not been intrusted to the slow and uncertain determina|tions of our reason, to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great director of nature intended to produce by them.
Before I conclude this note, I must take notice of a difference between the approbation of propriety and that of merit or beneficence. Before we approve of the sentiments of any person as proper and suitable to their
